John

Thing is, in charge of Wales this ‘negative’ tag haunted Hughes. Admittedly he had poor players to work with but some would say he is working with poor players now. With my pessimistic hat on, his time at Wales is being mirrored at Rovers. False promise at the start followed by a decline.

Souness said: "I thought it was a nervy affair, really, until we scored a goal. It was two teams aware of their situations. "Confidence plays such a big part in football. Some people need a great deal, some people get by with not a lot - and I think it showed at times in our play. "When we scored our goal we started to play with confidence and pass it around. "The way Blackburn set out to play they don't open up and chase you, so it was a dogged affair early on. "There won't be many teams that come here and win 3-0 the way they're set up to play. They are hard to break down and the players don't step out of position."

Hughes was very angry after the match yesterday. As I said in another thread it was our pedestrian passing which left him very annoyed. He also said he maybe needs to look again at the balance of the team. Think there has been somewhat of a knee-jerk reaction on here. The manner of the defeat hurt and the circumstances surrounding the match have added to the painful feeling. A positive to me what Craig Bellamy who showed that he is quality. He hardly had a pre-season and he looked quite sharp. I am sure we will find a way of getting the best out of him and that will only be good for the team. I think Scotty mentioned it in the post match thread. Hughes finds it hard to work out what our best line up is. I think he has the same questions marks over 4-4-2 as ourselves because on the message board we have debated at length if Reid can play centre midfield etc. I think ideally we need to look at Savage and Tugay playing our home matches. However, Tugay plays deep naturally so you cannot really have Savage deep as well. At home against lesser teams we should be on the front foot. However, we can talk tactics all day but too many of our players had off days yesterday and it cannot be put down solely to tactics. What I do not like about our situation is that we have some particularly tough matches coming up and it could get worse before it gets better.

It is not just United away though, we some horrible away fixtures coming up and the emphasis now will be to WIN home games or we really will be in trouble. Thought Zurab played well today and being a defender you would think he will only get better. Considering Bellamy has played hardly any football I thought he was looking sharper than he did at West Ham. I fear he could get soon pi*sed off as we don't have anyone who can complement him. Tugay thrives when he is around good attacking players - Tugay is a must starter, certainly for home matches. He has been there and done it, Bentley seems to think he is better than he is. Hughes said it afterwards, there was no tempo to our passing and it was far too sluggish. I have cooled down a bit, but still on reflection this defeat hurts because I just felt Newcastle were there for the taking.

Maybe when playing away........ but at home!! Playing Bellamy on his own does not make sense. Also playing pointless high balls to him does make much either. Looking at the fixtures coming up we have some tough times ahead. We were playing a team low on confidence and with a dodgy backline. However we never put them under enough pressure.

I am not a medical expert but the sensible option would be for Bellamy to be on the bench. He did not have that great a pre-season with relation to fitness and must be woefully short of match practice. Tempation to throw him in is obviously there but we need to be careful with Bellamy. Would love to see Jansen and Bellamy start though but maybe not for this match.

Mark Hughes celebrates his first anniversary as the Rovers manager today. Keep up the good work Sparky.

By Alan Oliver Souness, of course, fell out with the likes of Andy Cole, David Dunn, Dwight Yorke and Andy Todd during his time as manager of Blackburn. The first three have left the club, while Todd is suspended for Sunday. I remember boarding a plane with United in Lisbon when Souness and his backroom staff were furious about comments made by then Blackburn skipper Garry Flitcroft on the eve of last season's FA Cup semi-final with Manchester United. They claimed that Souness had done so much for Flitcroft, who had then stabbed his former manager in the back. But Flitcroft is now languishing in the Blackburn Reserves and that is another reason why the spotlight will be all on the Souness-Bellamy meeting on Sunday. Bellamy v Souness

Andy Gray talks a good game tactically. However, he is woefully out of touch on teams who do not have a high profile. On Hughes and his tactics, I am sure if we had a normal Matt Jansen and a fit Craig Bellamy that they would start up front for us. However, when you do not have a luxury of playing resources at your disposal then 4-5-1 may be better for us in the short term. I still cannot believe all this talk after playing Bolton. I remember saying to a mate last week, oh we have Bolton on Sunday prepare for a scrappy match.

I think we are seeing an over-reaction here because the over-rated football team is on the decline. It is not as if you have won the world cup. Suppose good excuse for a pi*s-up.

Some of the people on here are making such ridiculous points it makes me feel like smashing the monitor. Most of the comments seem to have followed the Bolton match. Don't some people understand football at all? Never heard of game plans? FFS stop going on about entertainment, it's all about results. If we won 2-0 and played dross you would be estatic. I can see Hughes is trying to build this club up again, it will take a while especially without unlimited funds.

Hughes said: "Matt did very well. He has not had a great deal of football recently. It is important Matt gets back to where we know he can be. "This is a first step and we are delighted for him. It was very important he played a part against Bolton and he certainly did that in the first half."

Hughes said after the game that he is going to give Jansen a long run in the team. No point in him just being on the fringe of things. Barring an injury, we will see if Jansen can return to the form of old.

Few points I would like to make, for what it is worth. · Sparky has got everyone fighting for the cause. What a committed display and it seems like a lot of the players would run through a brick wall for him. · Repeating what a few people have said, Nelsen was immense. I feel so much more confident when he is playing and I think his presence rubs off on the rest of the team. Should be made permanent club captain (big decision for Hughes). · Bentley shows nice touches, he will be a very useful player at home and probably generally as well! Also, he has not played much football so he cannot be at his sharpest. · Felt sorry for Jansen, poor service. I thought he did ok though in a game which had few chances. · The ‘Axe’ won so many second balls and actually played some nice passes in the first half. I have not seen that side to his game. In summary, I can understand what people are saying about negativity etc but we looked a good, solid team. Ok there does not appear to be an imposing attacking threat but our major player is currently injured. I also have to say I was wrong in my pre-match comments about Zurab. He acquitted himself very well considering he has only taken part in 2 training sessions at the club.

Sorry guys but so many teams come unstuck against Bolton at the Reebok. Thought we got our tactics right and although it was a dire game, most of Bolton's matches usually are. I can see where people are coming from with the 'negative' tactics but you need to win the second balls against Bolton or it is very likely that you will lose.

I do worry about the disruption to our defence. I really hope Zurab does not start as I do not think it is a game he should be playing in after only two training sessions with us. As there will be a lot of high balls and obviously it will be a physical game then Matteo should move to centre back (his natural position) and Gresko comes in at left back. Looking forward to seeing Bentley's debut. In front on the Sky cameras, let's hope we can do ourselves justice and keep 11 men on the park.

Most of you are directing all your anger at Sven and just him. Aren't the players to blame at all. Even though it was a 4-5-1 formation, surely the players should still have performed better. This is half the problem with the English team in my view, a lot of the fans think their players are better than they really are. I will repeat what I said earlier, the strongest England team would have a reasonable world cup but don't get carried away with how good you should be.

I thought England played ok last night. Obviously not a top class performance but you have to be honest with yourselves over this. Carragher has shown himself to be a sub-standard centre-half at international level. Luke Young is average. Ashley Cole is still dreaming of Chelsea (and his girlfriend no doubt) Becks has been past it for a while now. Can Gerrard and Lampard play together for the benefit of the team – does not look like it…. Owen has not played a lot recently – should get goals but will only deteriorate under Dean Saunders et al. World Cup….. Brazil are top quality, England are not. Time to get real England fans; you are not as good as you would like to think. Your strongest team out will probably get you to World Cup quarters but the lack of World Class players is evident.

Todd's out (suspended) is he not?

Think some of you don't fully understand how bad the relationship between Toshack and Hughes is. Savage comments may be 'childish' but Toshack has taken the pi*s out of him since he became Wales manager.

Hughes has just told Savage to let his football do the talking this season. He told the Sun reporter that last week.

Just watched Toshack and he really is a kn*b. It is personal between him and Savage - also Hughes and Bowen may I add. So Savage can come out and says what he wants regarding Wales. As I said in my previous post, Hughes has advised him this season not to speak to press before/after matches, but he is allowed to air his grievances over Wales which is fair enough.

Hughes has warned Savage about this interviews with the media. He is allowed to talk about Wales but not do any post match interviews unless he is man of the match.

I come onto this part of the chat forum for BRFC related football news. This thread has got nothing to do with football and should be moved IMO.

The Souness chant just sums up the losers/chavs/neds that sing it or think 'that its class man'. It also shows that they lack a brain and any sort of decent up bringing, I cringe reading their contributions on this message board.